


arsonist's lullaby

by thewinterose



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dark Jon Snow, F/M, I mean really dark, Semi-dark Sansa Stark, as in I creeped myself out writing this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2019-06-19 23:10:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15520770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterose/pseuds/thewinterose
Summary: Here is where it begins anew:He comes back dark and different, blood in his smiles, knives in his nails; more wolf than boy; more beast than man."Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be reborn."





	1. don't ever tame your demons (always keep them on a leash)

**Author's Note:**

> So, um, this is weird. I meant to work on a different fic, but for some reason this little plot idea got stuck in my head and wouldn't get out. I attribute it to Hozier tbh. I know this idea has been done to death, but I honestly can't get enough of dark!Jon and I'm sure that many of you can relate. I was a little iffy about rating this as explicit because I've never written smut before, but this story demanded it, and the amount of blood in this is a part of the rating as well. This is also a bit of a stylistic attempt for me. I never truly write like this, but I love the kind of Faulknerian twist of it and I hope that I did it justice. I am under no illusions that there are many jonsa authors out there that can do this leagues better than I can. Fic title obviously comes from Arsonist's Lullaby by Hozier, which I listened to on repeat while writing this. I hope you all enjoy!

It starts like this:

The world sinks into oblivion beneath him. The last stab of the dagger- _Olly’s dagger, dear gods!-_ imbeds itself into his heart, it’s bite sharp, ice covered teeth, and he falls, and falls, and falls. He falls into the dark; into the night; into the fire where he feels warmth settle against his fur, and his teeth, as sharp as Olly’s knife, scrape against his feral tongue. Blood is the only taste he knows. Blood on the body of what was once Jon Snow, his grey eyes now blind to the waking world. He sees with red eyes now-

_But no._

It doesn’t start like that either. This is where it ends. This is where the boy dies, ice in his bones, a dead rot starting in his heart. Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell, is no more something that is, than something that once was.

The boy is dead.

 

* * *

 

 

Here is where it really starts:

He has nearly reached his fourth name day when his little sister Sansa Stark is brought into the world.

She comes in a flurry of panic and screams and Father striding down the halls of Winterfell, his dark strands askew with the stress of his tugging fingertips. Even at nearly four, Jon was observant enough to catch the worry on his face, the red lines of his hands from the continued rasp of his beard against his palms. Old Nan would sit him aside when Robb was off, screaming and wild and uninhibited, and tell him that his eyes were old and wide, wise enough to catch anything. He never knew what to say to that.

He and Robb are kept outside of Mother’s room, where their father stands at the door in front of them, his shoulder’s tensed tight enough that the surrounding men are worried that he will disregard the rules of propriety and bound into the birthing room unannounced.

Robb wails loudly next to him every time their lady mother lets out an agonized scream, and even Jon has a hard time holding his tears at bay. He tries not to cry though. Robb would call him a baby, a little girl, if he did, and as the older brother by two moons, Jon has to set the example.

Old Nan sits in the chair underneath Robb, cradling the little boy in her lap, her gnarled fingers running softly though his messy auburn curls. Jon leans in a little closer at her side, craving her reassuring warmth. For some reason, his lady mother never cuddled with him. She only did so once, when he was nearly within the grasp of death, his little chest rattling with wet coughs. In his heart, he holds the memory of her soft fingers smoothing down the lines of his hot, crinkled forehead. He wishes that she would hold him like that again.

He turns to Old Nan, his old and wide and wise eyes as round as the moon. “Will Mother be okay?” he asks, his voice tremulous and scared, as unsure as the injured wing of a raven crow.

He has heard whispers from the servants before of pregnant women who come to the birthing bed screaming, and who end up torn apart and bloody, eyes unseeing, a squalling babe at their breast. A fear as primal and as raw as the direwolf on their family’s sigil crawls up inside of him and chokes him until he can hardly breathe.

Old Nan looks down at him, her liver-spotted hand still buried in Robb’s hair, and sends him a small smile, the edges of it sad.

 _Sad._ Jon only ever receives those sorts of smiles, tinged with melancholy and soft with reluctance. It makes his little heart ache with emotions beyond his comprehension.

She brings up her free hand and slides a finger down the tip of his small, straight, and regal nose, her touch warm and unfamiliarly maternal, and Jon relishes in it with a ferocity that scares him. He wants to suck up her warmth and have it circle within his body forever and ever and ever, until he can feel the love she provides at his fingertips, as easily as Robb can.

Even at nearly four name days, Jon understands that his lady mother prefers Robb and loves him with an intensity that she never can set aside for him.

A final scream rings out, and then silence fills the room. Father braces himself by the door, his knuckles white and shaking, his grey eyes bleak with blinding fear. But then, as if the gods had ceased their torment, a small, plaintive cry echoes from the room in front of them. The sound of it as delicate as the wings of the summer birds.

Father nearly collapses with relief, happiness coloring his features in an uncharacteristic glow, and he rushes inside the room, his arms outstretched.

Jon attempts to peer around the crack in the door when Maester Luwin cries out, “A girl! A baby girl!” but before he can, he is grabbed by one of the men standing by the door and ushered outside. He tries screaming and pushing at him, _let me see my baby sister!_ falling from his trembling lips, but everyone ignores him, the sad looks sent in his direction offering no explanation as to why he’s being kicked out when Robb gets to stay.

A sad-eyed wet nurse carries him to his room, and Jon clings to her and fights her all at once, one fist pounding against her back while the other bunches the woolen fabric at her breast in his tiny hand.

In his mind, he tries to summon his selfish desire to suck up her comforting warmth and let it drift inside of him. The want of it becomes so potent that he can _taste_ it, fire and blood and ash underneath his tongue, as saccharine as the sweet-smelling winter roses that his father can never bear to look at for too long a time.

He is a child and children are selfish, self-regarding creatures who devour affection and then demand an increase when they’ve more than reached their fill. Jon is the same way, but there is something in him, as hidden as he is among these stone-eyed Starks, that internalizes madness and greatness and spews out dragonfire, and it colors him in something as dark as ash. It makes him want _more._

However, that heat remains cloaked under the layers of cold and ice and Stark. Wolves decorate the halls of his home, and there is no dragon to be found beneath the rubble of what once was; what once might’ve been had the story turned out a bit differently.

His father walks into his room hours later, his bearing tired but proud, his eyes shining with joy. He holds out a hand for Jon to take, and he does, greedily basking in the affection he’s offered.

Along the way, his father whispers that his lady wife is sleeping and Jon wants to ask- to scream- why he never says _your mother_ like he does with his brother Robb, but he doesn’t. He stays as silent and as complacent as a malleable statue, moving wherever his father takes him. A steady thrum begins in his mind, niggling him with some unfinished thought, but Jon is too young to see what is plain in front of him yet.

Father arrives at the nursery and opens the door, gently moving Jon inside.

He can see a whisper of movement in the cradle in front of him, a tiny closed fist swinging in the air above, and Jon feels afraid. He doesn’t want to see who the baby is. Doesn’t even want her to exist, really, because she stands as another obstacle. She will be one more person that stands in the way of his lady mother’s love. She will be one more person who the household will fawn over and call _so beautiful_ as they ignore him and push him aside and leave him bereft of even more affection, of the love he never gets to earn, but his father grabs his shoulder and pushes him forward until his face is level with the cradle, and Jon does not have a choice but to look.

And with one glance, all of his misgivings and ill will is stripped bare, and an overwhelming fondness takes its place, as hot and as demanding as the dragonfire in his veins.

She is the picture of newborn seraphic beauty. The tuft of hair covering her forehead looks as fine and as soft as silk, and its color is a radiant auburn, a shining beacon in the dreary north.

 _Kissed by fire_ , Jon thinks.

Her eyes open to greet him, and Jon nearly gasps at their brilliance. They’re a Tully blue, like his lady mother and Robb, but their eyes are shallow puddles compared to the summer sky that resides in hers. Jon imagines that their color must be like that of an ocean, beautiful and wide and easy to drown in. He thinks that if his father’s hand was not placed at his shoulder, holding him in place, he might’ve been sucked inside of them. He would have been content to be.

But then his father speaks, and the enchantment is broken.

“This is your baby sister Sansa,” he says, pride evident in his tone, and Jon tries to say her name too, testing the soft syllables on his tongue, as lovely as her.

“San-sa,” he sounds out slowly, causing his father to chuckle quietly. He pats Jon’s shoulder and turns him around to face him.

Jon wants to fight him and look back at Sansa, but his father’s grip is too strong, and Jon has only the feeble strength of a child.

His lord father leans in close. “This is your baby sister, Jon. You must protect her and love her and cherish her. You and Robb must show her how a girl should be treated so that she may use her brothers as an example for what she looks for in a lord husband,” his father says sternly, but softly, his thumb holding Jon’s chin in place.

Jon nods at his words, even as something inside of him snarls at the mention of a _lord husband_ , but again, he is too young to realize why, too innocent to be tarnished by his family’s pre-determined instincts. For now, he is more boy than anything else.

His father nods back at him and smiles something slight and tender. He takes Jon’s hand and leads him back to his room, where Robb is waiting there for them, his blue eyes alight with excitement and familial love. Jon’s grey-black eyes are teeming with it as well, but there is a lingering darkness there, a smoky curl around his irises that burns as hot as embers.

No one can see it then, in this house of light and love and wolves. For now, there is only family, and Jon never gets to realize what was burning within him at that moment.

 

* * *

 

 

Here is where it begins anew:

He comes back dark and different, blood in his smiles, knives in his nails; more wolf than boy; more beast than man.

_Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be reborn._

In the dark of the night, beneath the Red Woman’s snowy hands upon his chest, beneath the blood-slickened scars atop his non-beating heart, Jon awakens.

He rises with a sputter, a gasp, a wrench at the cloth that covers his groin. All at once, hands reach out and touch him, and Jon does not bother to hide his snarl, to quiet his growl, because this is who he is now: more wolf than boy; more beast than man. They seem to understand and they back away.

The Red Woman approaches him warily, her scarlet eyes shining with awe and wonder. Her Lord of Light brought him back. That is enough for her to marvel at him, this living, breathing proof of her Lord’s existence. For the other’s, he must be a monster, or a god, or perhaps a monstrous god. To Jon himself, he is the living dead. He is a breathing corpse. He wishes they would’ve let him be.

“What did you see?” she asks softly, her ethereal voice floating in the air around him. Jon understands her immediately, but he wishes that he couldn’t. He was dead. He _should_ be dead. He didn’t see a thing. The dead cannot see.

_But no. That wasn’t right either was it?_

Ghost’s crimson eyes meet him by his position in front of the roaring fireplace, the flames settling a pleasant warmth against his furry back. Jon can it feel as keenly as if it were his own back. An understanding seems to pass between them.

“I saw nothing,” Jon answers, his eyes steadfast upon his wolf’s.

 

* * *

 

 

The next night, Jon walks out of the room he was resurrected in, Longclaw held tightly in his burned hand. Ghost, his ever silent fixture, is at his side, the snarl on his muzzle not unlike his master’s.

Jon knows that there is a procedure to this, that his father is probably cradling his head in his hands with shame and disappointment at his bastard son, his _only_ son that’s left. However, Jon doesn’t care.

_Ned Stark has no head left to cradle anyway._

There is something burning inside of him now; the flickering kindle in his youth, something that used to flare at Theon Greyjoy’s taunts, now a roaring flame, extinguishing what was once all good and pure within him. He craves blood now as readily as the Lord of Light demands his purified victims. Jon wonders if the Red Woman’s God left something of Himself inside of him.

He comes in the night, as silent as a specter, as unseen as a phantom, and holds his sword to their throats. He tries to prolong their deaths as long as he’s possibly able, but Jon, even in his boyhood, was never very patient. So when he tires of watching them struggle and clutch at their bleeding throats, he stabs Longclaw through their heads and writes _“Traitor”_ above them, using blood and brain matter as his ink.

For Alliser Thorne- _the pompous prick-_ he simply sic’s Ghost on him and watches from an old, weathered chair as the old man bleeds out against the floor. When he reaches out to Jon, a barely-there plea on his dying lips, Jon laughs and laughs and laughs, deriving pleasure from the fear that shines as bright as gold from his beady eyes.

It is the death of Olly that he enjoys the most, may the gods forgive him.

He strides silently into the room, but the boy is already awake, his fear a pungent, tangible thing and his pants soiled with urine. Jon is not surprised to find the boy waiting for him, blood does happen to linger in the air, but he does find himself disappointed with the fact. Watching them wake up to find him alive and vengeful was his favorite part of this.

The boy tries to run out past him, but Jon sweeps out his arm, faster than lightning, and seizes him by the throat. Olly screams for help, but no one comes for him, their fear of Jon Snow a potent thing now.

 _He is the undead. A breathing corpse. No man had ever been resurrected before,_ they all seem to think.

Jon throws him down upon his straw mattress and watches him through slitted eyes, flexing his hand upon the boy’s pale, malleable neck. He enjoys the feeling of his throat muscles expanding against his hand, begging for breath and yet always being denied it by Jon’s hard grasp. He decides whether this _traitor_ lives or dies.

 _I am in control now,_ he thinks, snarling at the frightened boy.

He draws his sword from his sheath and rests it lightly against Olly’s small, flexing throat muscle, the jaw above it still soft from pre-pubescence. Jon cannot summon the will to care.

He draws Longclaw across the boy’s neck, letting the blood drip, drip, and then cascade down the Valyrian steel, staining it a fiery crimson. The blood pools onto Jon’s palm, but instead of recoiling and wiping it on his sleeve as he might’ve done before, he cups his hand, and lets the warm fluid run down his arm. A baptism in its own right.

His sword did not slice deep enough to inflict an instant death, so he watches as Olly struggles in front of him; struggling to live; struggling to breathe; struggling to talk. Jon smirks through it all, thinking it an amusing picture. The boy that was so quick to call him a traitor is now left without any throat to speak at all.

He twitches once, twice, and then finally stills, his hand convulsing at his gaping, red throat. “J-on Sn-o-ow,” he rasps, garbling the syllables around a mouthful of blood. He won’t die.

Jon grows tired of watching this production, so he reaches out and grabs the dagger by the bedside, flakey with his dried blood.

He brings it to the boy’s chest and watches the fear and realization start to cloud his eyes.

 _Poetic justice,_ he thinks and then pushes down.

Before he leaves, he uses the blood coating his palm and from the boy’s neck to write one _“Traitor”_ above him, and then another _“Traitor”_ on his forehead.

 

 


	2. love's perfect ache

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to update! I truly adore this story so I always intended to come back to it, but school has a way of draining your motivation until you're nothing but tired. Thankfully, I've been sick and have been home so I've had plenty of time to sit down and write. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy!

This is where it ends:

The mountain ranges of the Eyrie reach far beyond her head, and when it is colder, the snow drips down and melts on the warmth of her lips. Everything in the Eyrie is black and white and physically pure, untouched by the warm color scheme that used to hang heavy in the halls of Kings Landing. It reminds her of home. It reminds her of-

_Nothing!_

It reminds Alayne of nothing.

The crows hanging overhead scatter away from a fresh deluge of snow. Alayne watches them silently, her eyes fixed upon their ash colored wings. The scent of fire lingers in the air.

 

* * *

 

 

She is called into her father’s chambers later that night, and Alayne pretends that the dreaded shivers that run down her spine have absolutely everything to do with the chill air and nothing to do with Father, even though the cold has never truly bothered her. But still, she doesn’t find it hard to pretend. In fact, she finds it so easy that sometimes she doesn’t even know when she’s pretending or not.

She stands up from her vanity, placing her pearl encrusted comb down and makes no effort to fix her appearance. At this point, she doubts her father cares about what she looks like anymore. He already has a face in his mind’s eye whenever he sees her.

_Cat,_ her mind whispers insidiously, but Alayne brushes off the name easily. She has never known a Cat in this life.

She approaches his door and knocks once, her knuckles gentle against the polished wood, her fingers shaking.

Father opens the door with a smile and a gleam in his eyes, and Alayne returns his smile easily, although the creases of her lips feel like cracks in her face. She doesn’t like to smile around Father, but he likes it so she does it anyway.

He gently grasps her arm and pulls her inside, peeking his head out slightly, as if to look for intruders; for spies that linger in the halls.

Alayne knows that her father likes his games of subterfuge and duplicity, so she takes this all in stride, even though they both know that he has no reason to check for spiders on the wall. Every spider in the Eyrie lives in his pockets, and if they don’t, they disappear, and Alayne never questions why. No one does.

When he finishes his charade, he tugs her inside and closes the door behind him; the soft click of it as loud as a war drum; as her heart.

Silence stretches between them for a few seconds, her father’s mint green eye’s steadfast upon her own, and Alayne wonders what he is seeing; herself? Or some other nameless phantom that dances forever outside his reach?

She knows that he likes to imagine that he is utterly devoted to her, either as a doting father or a potential suitor, but there has always been a stench of delusion around his apparent love for her.

He is attracted to her, of that she has no doubt, but whether he truly has any real regard for her, for Alayne Stone, is something she is not entirely sure of.

The silence pervades between them for seconds more before Father breaks it abruptly, slithering towards her and gently taking her hands in his clammy grasp.

Alayne wants to pull away, that look in his eyes familiar to her, but she doesn’t. She never does.

“There has been a change in plans, sweetling,” he whispers lowly, so lowly that she has to lean in closer to hear him, and Father’s eyes sparkle at her proximity.

“A change, how?” she asks, her tone sweet, curious, and Father slips his hand down her bare shoulder, caressing her velveteen flesh. Alayne shivers again.

“It seems Harrold Hardyng seems rather useless to us now that he has been rendered to an impotent cripple.”

It was a terrible accident. That’s all anyone could say. That’s all anyone would say.

_“Poor Harry Hardyng,”_ the maids would tsk, voices soft with pity. _“Poor Harry. He always had an affinity with skittish horses, though no one could say the same for the horse and that snake. He never stood a chance. Crushed clean through his spine, the maester says. Poor boy.”_

Of course, no one remarked upon the fact that snakes were not very common in the mountains of the Eyrie. Especially not the kind of snake that scared Harry’s horse and whipped the poor thing up into a frenzy.

No, snakes were not common the Eyrie.

Alayne looks up at her father, feels the clammy hands in hers, and watches desire flare up in his eyes as he rakes them down the marble line of her throat.

  _Except one,_ she thinks.

“Then what are we to do, Father? Marry me to Sweetrobin?” She asks, inching away from him.

Father reaches up and twines his spindly fingers in the lustrous locks of her brown hair, halting her movement. He bumps his nose with hers. Warm breath moistens the skin of her cheek.

“No, no, my clever girl. I have been informed by the maester that Robert grows ever ill by the day. I’m afraid he’ll probably die within the next five years,” he informs her gravely.

“Oh,” Alayne breathes, turning her face away, not wanting to look into his serpentine eyes and find her father’s true elation hidden beneath his false pity. Lord of the Eyrie at last, he must think.

It is true that Sweetrobin has always been too spoiled, too difficult, and borderline too intolerable. But Alayne has developed a genuine affection for the boy. It was hard not to when he worshipped her as he did.

Another crack splinters her mosaic heart, already heavy with the weight of her grief. Another soul added to her list of the dead.

But that isn’t right is it? Alayne has experienced no true misery aside from those gained in the life of a bastard. She has lost no one.

Alayne swallows the acid lining her throat. Her head throbs now with the memories of a different girl who experienced such sweet happiness in a life of insurmountable sorrow. She’s not that girl anymore. That girl was weak, pitiful, and stupid; too trusting for the likes of the lions who devoured her family whole and left her raw and aching and open. Alayne is stronger. Alayne is a survivor.

“Then what are we to do then?” she asks, breaking from her stupor.

Father chuckles and pulls her in even closer, skating his hand down her rosy, wet cheek.

“This is where you meet your destiny, love. I’ve made arrangements to have a large feast planned. In that feast, you will reveal your identity as Sansa Stark, the true heir to the North, and you will announce your designs to wed me. From then on, I will take the Knights of the Vale and reclaim Winterfell, your ancestral home. We will wed sometime soon after that, perhaps when we return to the Vale.” Her father suddenly laughs. “Or, if you prefer, we can wed in your father’s precious godswood. It may fuel the morale of the Northerners to see their winter rose marry under their sacred tree gods.”

Alayne takes a deep breath, panic suddenly clawing at her insides. She knew that one day her father would decide to end her Alayne Stone façade and make her rise again as Sansa Stark, but Alayne thought that that would be years from now. She’s not ready yet. She’s not ready to return home. She’s not ready to leave. She’s not ready to marry Petyr Baelish.

She glances up fearfully at Petyr, but he must mistake her fear for nervous anticipation because he brings her close and kisses her full on the mouth, his small lips devouring her, as if he wants to suck up her soul and have it trapped beside his own. He presses harder against her, growing impatient with her lack of response, and clutches her shoulders roughly. He digs his nails into the skin he had caressed just moments prior.

Alayne forces life into her lips and moves them mechanically against his own. Petyr, apparently satisfied with her reciprocation, moves back and takes her face into his hands.

“This will all work out the way I intended it, sweetling,” he promises her, his tone soft, his cold fingers even softer as they caress the sides of her face.

Alayne forces herself to nod, even as shock and rage make her want to shove his filthy, lecherous hands off of her.

She wants to scream; to force him out; to scrape his green-grey eyes out of their sockets and watch the wolves feast on his lying mouth, but she can’t. She can’t. She’s never had a say with him, not now, not a year ago, and not ten years into the future, if he keeps her trapped that long. She’ll always be under his thumb.

So instead, she says, “yes, Father,” with sugar on her tongue.

Petyr laughs gaily at her apparent shyness and dismisses her with a nod.

Alayne whispers a goodnight and walks slowly down the hall to her room, where she throws herself upon her bed.

She’d rather die than marry Petyr- that treacherous snake- but she has no alternative. No one to run to except him. Most of the world thinks her dead, and even if they didn’t, Cersei Lannister’s belief in her being involved with Joffrey’s assassination would make it so. She is alone in this world. Arya is probably dead. Robb and her mother were murdered. Bran and Rickon were strung up and betrayed by that ghastly Theon Greyjoy, and her father was the first to fall victim to the fatal political machinations of the Lannister’s. Everyone was dead. Everyone was-

Alayne suddenly shoots up from her pillow, her delicate hands coming up to shield her mouth from the mad, relived giggles that spring up from inside of her.

Not everyone was dead. One brother remains to her, and the thought of his solemn grey eyes fills her heart with tender longing. The acid lining her throat is replaced with sweet sugar; the grief now overshadowed with hope. Such sweet hope! She hasn’t tasted it in years.

Oh, how long had it been since she thought of her half-brother Jon Snow; the sweetest and most timid boy she had ever known. She might have worshipped Robb, but her older brother had been as wild and cocky as he was noble and honest. Theon always exacerbated Robb’s darker habits, while Jon Snow had tempered their brother’s overconfidence with his reserved nature. She might not have always given Jon the attention she wanted to, but she had always loved him dearly, and she thinks that he did too.

Alayne stands up and runs to her closet, grabbing a bag and then proceeding to shove her warmest clothes and dresses inside. She would meet Jon at the Wall and supplicate herself before him and beg for his forgiveness. Of course, this would come after she hugged and greeted him with a thousand kisses, each kiss to make up for the times she dismissed him for the sake of her mother.

_Oh, how wrong I was!_   She laments.

Alayne, when she was satisfied with the bulk of her bag, then scurries over to her desk, where she picks up a warm, fur-lined cloak with a hood and drapes it over herself.

She walks slowly out of her room and tip toes down the length of the grand halls, making her way to the stables.

She isn’t the best rider- nowhere near her sister in regards to natural skill- but she has picked up enough of the practice in order to travel safely. It will be a long and arduous journey, but Alayne doesn’t feel intimidated. She has experienced enough grief that the prospect of reuniting with her only remaining family has her filled with enough determination to travel for a hundred years, if need be.

She has just reached the stable when a sudden cry of, “Who is there?” has her freeze, her heart pounding furiously in her chest.

She hasn’t prayed in years, and yet in this moment, she craves it more than anything.

A figure approaches her warily, the shadowed outline of a dagger held in the air in front of it. “Who is there?” the figure repeats, fear in their voice now.

Alayne recognizes the voice: Mya Stone.

She wants to call out to her friend, to share her true identity, but fear has her frozen solid. If she moves, she might fall into a million pieces.

Mya moves closer, the moonlight illuminating the intensity of her blue eyes. Recognition dawns on her pretty features and she inches forward.

Her eyes scan down Alayne’s stark expression and her trembling hands before finally landing on the bag held in her white-knuckled grip. “Alayne?” she questions softly, as one might soothe a skittish rabbit. “Are you alright?”

Alayne swallows and forces herself to stand upright and meet her friend’s concerned gaze. “I’m leaving, Mya,” she chokes out. “I’d ask that you not tell anyone.”

Mya rears her head back, clearly shocked. “Leave? As in leave forever? What about Myranda and I? Is this because of Lord Hardyng? What about your father?”

A feral rage overcomes Alayne and she sneers, abruptly stepping forward. “Petyr Baelish _is not_ my father!” she very nearly yells. “I’d damn him to the Seven Hells if I could!” she snarls.

Mya raises her hands cautiously, clearly taken aback by her sudden outburst. “What do you mean that he’s not your father?” she asks.

Alayne swallows, hesitation drowning her. Could she trust Mya to aid her in her escape? Mya, who has never truly known her until this moment?

She suddenly looks up and stares into her friend’s concerned gaze, her earnest desire to help her clear in her manner. Alayne takes a breath.

“Petyr Baelish is not my father,” she says. “Lord Eddard Stark was my father, just as Lady Catelyn Stark was my mother.” Then as if an afterthought, she adds: “And my name isn’t Alyane Stone, it is Sansa Stark.”

Mya opens and closes her mouth several times like a gaping fish, her eyes blown wide with astonishment. “Sansa, you say? As in of House Stark? And your father… the traitor…” she trails off, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.

Sansa glares at her friend, indignation flaring up inside of her. “He was not a traitor!” she yells. “He was framed!”

Mya brings up her hands and pulls Sansa in for a hug. “I’m sorry,” she coos, smoothing a hand down her brown hair, the tender touch bringing tears to Sansa’s eyes. It’s been so long since someone has held her with the genuine desire to comfort her, and not with any perverse ulterior motive. Sansa is not quite so sure of what the altruistic love of a friend feels like anymore.

After a few moments, Mya steps back and glances again at Sansa’s bag. “Did you put any food in that thing?” she asks.

Sansa wants to slap a hand over her forehead. If Mya never caught her, she would’ve died of starvation long before she found Jon. Her bashful glance must have betrayed her forgetfulness.

Mya gestures at Sansa to stay where she is before she runs off, disappearing into the inky blackness of the night. Sansa wants to call after her, something suspicious and ugly telling her that Mya has run off to betray her intentions to Baelish, but when her friend returns, her arms are ladled with food and a bag of coins.

Tears at her friend’s kindness spring to her eyes, and Sansa’s heart aches with the warmth that floods it. Her mosaic heart beats in tune with the sounds of the night, and she tastes freedom, as sweet as nectar, on her lips.

“Think nothing of it,” Mya says before Sansa can thank her. “I have a feeling you’ll be traveling to the Wall, for I know your half-brother Jon Snow is the Lord Commander, so I ask you to stay off the Kingsroad. In time, your true hair color will begin to show, and I know that given half the chance, any beggar on the street is going to sell you to the Lannisters for a hefty reward.” Mya suddenly stops and pulls Sansa in again, where both girls embrace each other tightly, knowing that this is goodbye.

When they pull away, Mya hands her the dagger she was carrying, and Sansa shoves it into her bag without a word. Instinctively, she knows that she might need it.

Sansa steps back and hefts herself onto a white mare, one she frequently rides, and turns to wave at her friend. “I’ll never forget your kindness, Mya. I’ll pay you back someday. I promise.”

Mya smiles sadly. “You can pay me back once you’ve reunited safely with Jon Snow,” she says, although now a tremor skates down her expression. She looks troubled now. “Sansa, I-“ she takes a breath. “I have heard some troubling rumors about the Wall…”

Sansa furrows her brows, curious now. “What rumors?” she asks.

Mya suddenly schools her expression into one of passivity. “It is nothing,” she assures Sansa. “They are impossible rumors anyhow. There is no point into speaking of things that have never happened. Goodbye, Sansa,” she says.

Sansa purses her lips at her friend’s strange behavior, but forces herself to dismiss her foreboding words. She can’t focus on negative thoughts when her desire to see Jon again overshadows everything dark and angry within her.

With one last wave, Sansa departs, taking off into the forest with hope shining bright in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

They call him Lord Snow now.

There is no pretense of friendship; of familiarity.

Jon Snow died under the daggers of his brothers, and the monster who rose from beneath the Red Woman’s hands is not any more human than his loyal beast is.

There are strange whispers in the night; distant howls and choked off screams.

The men who remain in the wake of the Lord Commander’s bloody rampage lie awake at night and count their breaths. They listen attentively to the heavy treads that thump outside of their door and pray fervently to their indifferent gods.

Jon Snow is a different sort of god now: a dark one, the color of ash and flame, with a tongue as red as blood and eyes that have seen the abyss. He says that there is no gods to greet in the afterlife or any Seven Hells to torture a man for eternity. There is only the hell on earth, and the only monsters that exist are men. Jon Snow is a monster too.

He is not a man that can be stopped or reasoned with. He is less than human; a beast. The only one that even speaks to him now is the Red Woman, and even he snarls at her presence, his empty eyes trained on the brilliant blood red of her hair, almost as if he is offended by the saturation of the color.

The men at the Wall don’t know who to fear. Their leader or the dreaded Night King who haunts their nightmares. Sometimes, when Lord Snow stares too long at any of them- his grey eyes overtaken by smoke and ash and darkness- they’re not too sure who the real threat is anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

After the night where he took vengeance upon those who have wronged him, Jon takes their bodies and throws them out into the snow.

Their sticky blood coats him; drying and flaking on his clothes, but Jon welcomes the bloody baptism. He was reborn in ash and fire and blood. It seems only fitting to be baptized in it as well.

The men watch and retch and cringe as they come upon the masses of decaying flesh. The corpse of young Olly is the most wretched and foul, for the bugs and detritus came first for the _traitor_ written on his forehead and encase his head in a wriggly, grey crown.

The more soft-hearted men approach him as he sits and watches this slow production, this natural but well-deserved decomposition of disgusting, rotting flesh. Jon sits and stares without issue, even as the days pass into weeks and months, and the bodies and the smell become wretchedly overpowering. Why wouldn’t he? It isn’t as if he can smell them anyway, and besides, he enjoys the sight.

“Lord Commander Snow,” the men say. “Please, none of the men can sleep with this odor in the courtyard. It drifts into the rooms at night and chokes us.”

Jon looks up, his grey eyes devoid of all feeling, all empathy.

“Then choke,” he says simply and moves back to resume his favored past time. The men do not approach him again.

Finally, one day approached where Jon seemed to have had his fill of watching his conspirators decay.

He stands up, snaps at his wild beast with the eyes of blood and flame, and meets the wolf’s gaze. A certain transformation, some kind of strange telepathy seems to pass between them, and the direwolf bounds off towards the bodies. Jon Snow walks after him.

The men watch as Lord Snow and his wolf take the disgusting corpses- more skeleton than flesh at this point- and arrange them in a strange circle, akin to a funeral pyre.

Jon snaps at one of the men nearby. “A torch,” he demands simply, and yet, even with only uttering two words, a primordial power seems to emanate from him, cloaking him in all things out worldly. The man nods and scurries off quickly, coming back with a lit torch within seconds. Jon takes the object from his hand without acknowledgment.

He brings the flame closer to the decayed form of Alliser Thorne, his beady black eyes teeming with squirming maggots. Jon grins at the sight, his own gaze alight with the flickering flames and little else. No emotion, just a slick satisfaction.

“For the Watch,” he whispers and sets the torch down.

Since the bodies have decayed to the point of being mostly tattered clothes and skeleton with hanging bits of rotting flesh clinging to the bone, the fire takes longer to catch.

Jon crouches and peers closer, so close his nose is tickled by the warmth of the flame, and watches as the fire spreads slowly over his dead enemies. He would’ve laughed if he had any ability to.

The men gag as the scent of the long-dead bodies wash over them. Forgetting their fear of their leader, they scurry away and hide in their rooms, unwilling to watch any more of Jon Snow’s vengeance.

Jon does not notice them leave, nor does he care when he does. Instead, he keeps his eyes fixed on the fire, his eyes flitting back to and fro with the flickering of the flames. He seems like fire itself; strong, destructive, chaotic, and primordial. He never cared for fire before. He never set any for fun when he was boy, but now fire seems to be the only thing that warms his depraved soul, and blood is the only thing that fuels it.

_Fire and Blood. Fire and Blood. Fire and Blood…_

_I’m as mad as a godsdamned Targaryen,_ he thinks. He doesn't care.

“For the Watch,” he says again as Olly did before he plunged that dagger into his heart.

“For the watch,” he whispers.

 

* * *

 

 

This is where it begins again:

Sansa stands in front of the gate, atop her half-dead horse, her dark cloak now grey with grime and mud.

If she were the girl she was from the past, she might have thrown out the damned thing and refused to let anyone see her until she deemed herself presentable again. However, Sansa is not that girl anymore, and besides, she is finally going to see her family again.

_Oh, how sweet it is,_ she thinks. _How sweet it will be to see her brother again,_ _bastard born or not._ Sansa has no such prejudices against bastards anymore.

A man must see her standing, because she hears a distant call of, “Open the gate!” and her hands begin to tremble.

The massive black gate opens slowly in front of her and Sansa urges her horse onward, stroking its matted coat and whispering promises of food and a stable for it to rest in. Her fingers shake relentlessly as she does so, her anxiety so profound it makes her want to vomit, but she attributes her nerves to anticipation and not dread.

“What is there to dread anyway?” she asks herself lightly as the horse silently trudges forward. She is to see Jon again; her family; the only family she has left. Seeing him again will be nothing short of the sweetest euphoria. The thought of reuniting with him has been the only thing driving her forward. She doesn’t even want to consider what she would do if she found out Jon was dead.

_Kill myself perhaps_ , she muses morbidly as she reaches a foul smelling courtyard. A cold, icy fear begins to unfurl in her heart. She has smelled this odor before; this rancid-sweet odor that permeated as thick as Dornish perfume from her father’s decapitated head. Just the memory of it almost causes her to faint. She has a strong desire to block her nose and run, but the thought of Jon and her instilled courtesy makes her shove the urge away and take heavy breaths through her mouth.

_I’ll not run away,_ she thinks with determination. _I’ve come all this way to see him again and I’ll be damned if I falter to weakness._ And Sansa was not that wilting, fragile flower anymore. She was silk covered steel; a phoenix born from cracked porcelain. She wouldn’t fall victim to anyone’s duplicitous machinations anymore. Not even her own.

Men come to gather to the balconies and the courtyard to watch her, and Sansa can see them trying to peer past the shadowed covering of her grimy hood. Her heart picks up at their intense scrutiny, at the quiet helplessness that seems to waft off of them, and she reminds herself that their staring is due to curiosity and not attraction.

Sansa swallows and shakily lowers herself from her horse, whose knobby knees tremble with the effort it takes to stand. She brushes the mare’s coat absentmindedly and begins to look around.

Aside from the putrid smell and the somber looking men, Castle Black seems to be a bleak, hopeless dwelling, where spirits die slow, agonizing deaths. Not one of the men who looks at her has any residual happiness or contentedness lying deep within their eyes. Just seeing them makes her heart ache with pity and compassion; and it scares her, for Jon has been living here for many years now, and the thought of his spirit breaking has her eyes sting with unshed tears.

She turns around slowly, eyes catching on each of the men’s faces, trying to see the smoky grey curl of her half-brother’s irises; so much like her father, and yet tinged with something more. Something decidedly un-Stark like. She always just assumed that was his mother’s miniscule mark on her physically Northern son.

She turns back to stare at the men by the stable, but a flash of movement to her left has her switching back just as quickly. She snaps her head to the side, her blue eyes wide with shock and hope. Through the shadow of her hood, she meets his gaze.

Oh, just the sight of him is enough to send her to tears! Happy, near hysterical sobs bubble from Sansa’s full lips and she yanks her hood down, her auburn hair catching the light of fires that were lit around them, causing her hair to shimmer like copper flames.

Jon, whose gaze was so disconcertingly impassive before, suddenly looks as shocked as she does, his grey eyes widening and his mouth slackening. He turns to move down the stairs and the men around him nearly scurry away from him like skittish mice. In the back of her mind, Sansa marvels at their strange reaction to him, but the thought is fleeting and insignificant. All she can focus on right now is Jon.

_Oh, Jon. Sweet, sweet Jon. Her only family now. The only one that mattered._

Finally, her half-brother stops before her, but the shock is gone from his face now. He is expressionless and eerily calm. He takes a step closer. “Sansa,” he says simply, but just the shock of his hearing his voice again after so long has her almost crumple over with shock and a joy so profound she can almost forget every awful thing that has brought them to this moment.

“Jon,” she breathes out and then launches herself at him.

An audible, terrified gasp echoes from the men around them but Sansa pays them no heed. She is too consumed with happiness to even process their obvious trepidation.

Sansa stands on her tip toes- he is taller than her now- and wraps her arms around him until she clings to his neck like a vice.

“Oh, Jon,” she murmurs, her mouth fluttering against his bearded cheek. “I feared I would never see you again!”

Jon slowly brings his arms up around her, holding her to him almost cautiously, as if he expects her to attack him, but like with the men, Sansa doesn’t notice.

She pulls back from him slightly and shifts her hands from the back of his neck onto his cheeks. Her brilliant eyes shine with tears as she looks up at him. “I was so scared something happened to you. I was scared of what would happen if I came here and you were gone. I would’ve died,” she says softly and then pulls him down by his neck to press a full, platonic kiss to his lips.

When their lips touch, Jon’s grip around her waist becomes as vice-like as her own, and he rests his bearded chin on top of her auburn hair when she nestles back into him.

They breathe each other in for several seconds before Sansa steps back slightly, still held tightly in his arms.

Jon leans back to stare at her, his eyes no longer frighteningly empty, but burning with intensity and hunger. The sight of it almost causes her to shrink back, for his grey eyes seem to flicker and dance with the flames above her head; as if they are one in the same.

Even still, Sansa pushes past her trepidation and leans her soft, wet cheek against his callused palm. “I missed you, brother,” she whispers, a watery smile on her face.

Jon’s intense gaze doesn’t relent for a moment as he stares at her, his eyes raking down the delicate curves and lines of her face, before finally falling on the shimmery copper of her hair.

He ignores her words and twines the hand on her cheek into the auburn curls that lie on the nape of her neck. His breathing becomes heavier as his fingers slowly caress the silken skin of her neck and the softness of her hair. Sansa shivers, but not in fear.

“Kissed by fire,” he murmurs, his voice rumbling against her cheek.

He pulls her in again and Sansa lets him, running her small hands against his broad back and sighing with contentment against him. All the while, Jon continues to pet her hair.

The men eventually disperse, hope flaring within them at the sight of their monstrous Lord Commander seemingly happy with his long-lost younger half-sister.

Jon doesn’t notice them leave, as Sansa does. He just lets his fingers run back and forth, back and forth on her hair, as red as fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fated reunion! I had a fun time writing that scene, although at first I had to puzzle through how I would write Jon's reaction to her. I think I like what I did. I hope you guys did too.


	3. and the lights were as bright as my baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!: Some scenes in this chapter can be potentially triggering because of both physical violence and PTSD due to past sexual assault. Read at your own risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what ending?? LMAO

It begins like this:

She lies nestled under the coarse, old furs in the Lord Commander’s bed. Her slight, trembling form curled into a fetal position. She looks so small, so delicate, so utterly breakable that it makes Jon want to hold her close and feel her soft breath against his bearded cheek. It makes him want to caress that silken expanse of flame that flows down from her scalp to her shoulders.

Even from this distance, he can still feel the fleeting, whispering touch of her lips against his own. It must have been so insignificant for her; the chaste, gentle gesture of affection she believed was appropriate for a brother.

At another time, he might have thought the same. He might have brushed off the kiss as nothing more than an innocent- albeit strange- greeting, and moved on with his day. But now he can’t. He can’t.

He fixes his eyes on that silky auburn hair again, the texture of it burned into his skin, branding him and scarring him like the flame he was born from.

_Sansa, Sansa, Sansa…_

He tests the syllables on his lips; tastes the sweetness of her name on his tongue.

He was infatuated with her as a child. He can admit that now. Shame and self-loathing is now no longer an obstacle that can blind him to her obvious radiance.

He loves her. He _loves_ her. He loves her with an aching, bleeding ferocity that would scare the Jon of old. It even surprises him now, the depth of his feeling. When the Red Woman brought him back and he enacted his revenge, he had thought that he would continue on as an empty husk of a man; a man that the others would call a blood-soaked beast, but the whispering touch of Sansa’s lips upon his own and her soft, gentle fingers sliding against his neck had awoken something primal within him.

He wants to protect her. He wants to bury himself within her. He wants to take hold of her slight, porcelain form and make it his own.

He looks over at her again. He sees the rise and fall of her dainty shoulders.

_So delicate. So small. So irresistibly tender._

He wants to crush her underfoot.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sansa wakes up the next morning and thinks it a dream.

She has had those dreams before when she was a prisoner in Kings Landing. She would wake up in her old bedroom at Winterfell, with her soft, warm grey furs and pink ribbons tied to her bedpost and she would cry with the elation of it; and when she really woke up, the grief that would crest over her would sometimes be so insurmountable, she found it hard to even get out of bed. So, she closes her eyes and squeezes them shut, willing for this unfamiliar, coarse bedroom around her to disappear, and for Alayne’s quarters to be the sight that greeted her. However, when she opens her eyes again, all she sees is Jon’s imposing figure standing at her side, his grey eyes filling her heart with instant relief.

Sansa scrambles up from her supine position and throws her arms around his neck, breathing in his musky scent. When she was younger, she might have cringed away from him, finding the smell of sweat and leather unpleasant and barbaric, but now all it does is ground her to reality; remind her that she still has something yet to live for; someone yet to love without fear or reservation.

Jon’s arms swing up to bury her into him, and Sansa would gasp at the slight pain of his intense hold if she didn’t love it so much.

His obvious care, even when it hurts, remains to be the sweetest thing in the world for her.

After a few moments, Sansa pulls away, the frigid chill of the Wall beginning to affect her. Jon must feel her shiver from the cold, because he pulls away and walks over to a vacant chair, grabbing a rough-looking, dark woolen dress and tossing it her way.

Sansa catches it and holds it out, ashamed at her instant displeasure with it. It is an ugly thing, but she is thankful nonetheless.

“Do you not like it?” Jon asks. Sansa switches her gaze from the dress onto him and smiles brightly, embarrassed at how transparent she must have been.

 _What would Fa- Petyr say?_ She thinks derisively.

“It is perfect, Jon. Thank you,” she says politely.

Jon keeps his unrelenting, intense gaze upon her. There is a strange aura around him now; something powerful and old and unyielding. It is apparent in his broad shoulders; in the strength of his crossed-arms; in the commanding stance that he takes. It makes her want to smile at his growth, for surely it must be a by-product of his status as a leader. And yet, something inside of her- that ugly and suspicious voice- whispers: _No, no! That’s not it, that’s not it…_

Ashamed of herself once again, Sansa resolutely banishes that spiteful train of thought and brings it close to her chest, relieved, at least, that it feels warm.

“The Wall takes no women, right, Jon?” she asks, eyeing the dress, smoothing her slender fingers on the wooly fabric.

She sees him nod out of the corner of her eye and grab the vacant chair, before turning it over and sitting down, straddling the sides. His strong legs plant firmly upon the ground, the slight bang of his feet startling her.

It seems so strange that even an action as innocuous as sitting in a chair can seem so unnaturally divine when he does it.

She decides it must be the spirit of Castle Black that is influencing him in some small way, what with its history of Others and barbaric wildlings; stories of dashing black knights that she used to find so entrancing back then and which almost offend her now.

“Where did you get a dress then?” she asks, turning a coy smile in his direction. “Tell me, Jon, is there something about your men that I should know?” she teases.

Jon’s lips twitch in a movement reminiscent of a smile, but it doesn’t catch, almost as if his mouth had forgotten the practice.

Something rings false in Sansa’s brain, but she dismisses it.

“It must have belonged to one of the Spearwives then,” he muses absently, palming the head of a sharp dagger strapped to his side.

Sansa’s eyes remain riveted upon the movement of his hand, her gaze fixed upon the gentle circulations of his callused fingers. She shivers once. She’s cold.

“What is a Spearwife, Jon?” she asks. Sansa moves slightly and sits back on her ankles, laying the dress gently upon her knees. She doesn’t meet his gaze.

“A free folk woman.” At her raised eyebrow, he elaborates: “A wildling woman.”

“Oh,” Sansa says simply, before taking the dress in hand and thrusting it towards Jon’s direction. “I can’t take this then. At least not without asking the woman who owns it.”

Jon laughs suddenly, the dark baritone of it startling her. There is also something beneath it-some passionless note- that frightens her as well.

“You could very well try,” he answers cryptically. “Although I don’t think it would do much good.”

Sansa quirks her head slightly to the side in confusion. “How so?”

“Because she’s dead,” Jon states blandly and then stands up from his chair, shifting his intense gaze to hers.

Sansa feels cold fingers inch down her back, an old wariness forming in her gut, but she suppresses it with everything she has. She is not afraid of Jon. She _cannot_ be afraid of Jon. He is the only good thing she has left.

She swallows and blinks rapidly, wanting to push the dress from her lap, finding it morbid to wear the dress of a dead woman. “Oh,” she breathes. “I’m sorry that she died.” She doesn’t know what else to say.

Jon glances at her out of the corner of his eye, his mouth twisted in some emotion she can’t name.

“I’m sure she is too,” he says cryptically, keeping his intense gaze upon her.

It’s strange. Before, she would always liken his eyes to their father’s, with their shape and similar coloring. And yet, when she looks at him now, she sees nothing of that familiar likeness. Nothing of Lord Eddard Stark. Nothing of Stark at all.

No. It is something darker. Something decidedly _more_ than what she could even describe. They make her feel like a prey in shadow, like a skittish lamb running from the ravenous wolf, and yet not.

Being a prey would make her afraid. Vulnerable.

Sansa feels nothing but exhilarated under his gaze.

She clears her throat after a few moments, gesturing towards the door with her chin. “If you wouldn’t mind, Jon. I think I should change now,” she says.

Her brother dips his chin in acknowledgement and walks towards the door, shutting it behind him.

Sansa watches as he leaves, trying to summon a smile at the sight of his retreating back, familiar and yet so strange with those broadened shoulders and straight posture. And yet she can’t. She can’t summon anything.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Half an hour later, Sansa stands at the mirror, combing through her auburn locks with her fingers and tying the two front pieces of her hair into a traditional braided hairstyle. Petyr never let her wear her hair like this in the Vale, claiming that any lord could’ve recognized her from her youth and could’ve exposed her for an imposter, but she always found that a tad overdramatic. Nevertheless, she did as he said. As she always did when she was Alayne.

It’s almost sad now, how just styling her hair a certain way could give her an illicit thrill, as if Petyr could see her performing this small act of rebellion.

If she were a naiver person, she could say that she wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore: the man with the snake eyes and a slithering, silver tongue, but Sansa knows that her interactions with him are far from over. He won’t take kindly to her running off in the night and reuniting with her half-brother when he had meant to take her for a bride. And Jon-

And Jon. What would Jon do?

Sansa knows that Jon, with his keen interest in battle tactics and sword fighting, could never handle a man like Petyr Baelish, a person who could convince a man to sell his own hand if he were inclined enough.

But Sansa is.

It’s taken a few years perhaps, but she is hardly that simpering little dreamer of a girl anymore. Cersei and Margaery and Petyr taught her how to play the game in their own individual ways.

Sansa has only just reunited with her Jon, her family, the only person she loves left in the world. She has to protect him. She has to-

A knock sounds at the door, startling her from her thoughts. Sansa presses a hand to her chest and sighs deeply, steadying herself.

“Come in,” she calls.

A rugged man cloaked in black walks in timidly, his head bowed, his hands folded behind his back. He is clearly intimidated by her: the mysterious half-sister of their Lord Commander.

Sansa smiles at him disarmingly and extends a hand in his direction. “Eddison Tollet, I assume?” she asks kindly.

The man in question looks up at from beneath the fringe of his hair and nods. “Aye, my lady. I’ve come to escort you to breakfast,” he says. He looks at her offered hand for a moment before reaching forward and bending his head over it, all the while looking awkward and hesitant.

Sansa widens her smile, feeling a touch of pity for him now. Was she really so frightening? She repeats the question to him teasingly.

Edd Tollet shakes his head, moving back a step, farther away from her. “No, my lady,” he says, that hint of hesitation still plain in his voice, in his manner, in the way he only looks at her for seconds at a time. She would be offended if she weren’t so curious.

“The Lord Commander has ordered us not to touch you unless strictly necessary,” he explains.

Sansa furrows her brows delicately. Surely Jon couldn’t distrust his own men this much. They were brothers by oath. That had to come with some form of attachment.

“Well it would hardly be proper etiquette to escort a lady to breakfast without taking her arm,” she counters, extending her hand once again.

For some reason his statement has unsettled her and she doesn’t know why. Why doesn’t Jon trust his men? Why is Edd Tollet so skittish around her? There is a difference between following orders for the sake of orders and fear. Does this man fear her brother? Did Jon threaten him?

Why?

She thinks of the way Jon’s men scattered away from him when they reunited in the courtyard.

_Why?_

Edd eyes her arm like it’s a poisoned dagger poised to strike, and steps back again. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I cannot.”

Sansa studies his expression, analyzes the stark fear that rests in his eyes, the tremor of his hands, the way his shoulders tense as if someone is watching over him, holding a knife to his back.

It confuses her. It terrifies her.

She wants to push it down and push it away, but she has survived for so long because of her observance, her adaptability, and she cannot ignore this.

She stands up straighter and strides toward him, pushing away the niggling fear that rises inside her from being so close to a man that she doesn’t know.

“Why?” she demands as she looks sternly into his eyes. “Why are you so afraid?”

Edd sucks in a breath, his eyes widening and flickering every which way like a skittish horse. His reaction to her question solidifies Sansa’s resolve while simultaneously heightening her fear, and she grips his wrist, squeezing it as hard as she can.

_“Why?”_

“My lady, please-!”

“Edd,” a deep voice interrupts, breaking them from their stupor.

Edd reacts quickly, gasping loudly and yanking his arm from Sansa’s grip. The speed of his movement makes her yelp, and like he was there the whole time, Jon is by her side, his hand wrapped around Edd’s throat.

Sansa gasps, stepping away, stricken by the sight of her brother, but Jon pays her no heed, flexing his fingers around the neck of a struggling Edd.

 _“What did I say about touching her?”_ Jon growls ominously, his other hand reaching for the dagger clipped to his belt. Edd shakes his head furiously against her brother’s hand, his face going purple.

Sansa wants to scream, _“Stop! Stop!”_ but she finds her tongue useless and heavy like a stone in her mouth. It should horrify her that even after all this time, she is still as useless as she was when she was a girl of eleven name days.

Finally, time seems to orient itself for her, the world finally turning on its axis, because Sansa rushes forward, grabbing onto Jon’s hand- the one choking Edd- and attempts to peel his fingers from the man’s throat.

She starts babbling, pleas and whimpers and commands falling from her lips, but Jon stays steadfast, and Edd is beginning to collapse.

In a desperate act, Sansa pushes herself between the two men and buries her face into Jon’s chest, one hand clutching the fabric of his leather jurkin, while the other punches and slaps and scratches him.

“Please,” she whispers, her mouth moving against the soft fabric, her tears staining the cloth. “Please, please, _please-_ “

A thud. A groan sounds. And then gasping. And before Sansa can move away to look back, her brother’s hands fall on her, one entwining in her hair, while the other holds her tight against him by the small of her back.

Sansa sobs in relief, scared and triumphant and so, so consumed by that aching, horrible love that she can’t seem to let go of. She stands on her toes and wraps her arms tightly around his neck, tears spilling onto his collar.

Her brother doesn’t seem to mind. He simply pulls her closer and moves in to inhale the scent of her temple, mouthing something against the soft skin there.

She can’t decipher it. Can’t hear it. But it feels like tenderness, like love, like something older than herself, and yet strangely, younger than her frightening brother.

She stays in his arms, lets him hold her, and relishes in his awful affection.

He’s different. She knows that now. She sees it, even though she’s tried her best not to.

But she loves him. Oh gods she loves him. More than anything. He’s the last of her family, a symbol for hope. How can she not?

But she’s frightened.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 Its hours later when Sansa journeys into Edd’s room.

She’s played innocent all day, clutching onto Jon’s arm and greeting his men courteously and pretending not to notice the way that his men flinched every time Jon so much as glanced at them.

Playing her little bird act, the dutiful daughter Alayne Stone act is not hard for her. She used to act the same way with Petyr and fool the Vale men by bestowing soft smiles on them and reserving one especially for her loving, doting “father”, but in a way, the ease in which she does it scares her now. Because even after seeing what she saw, even after feeling that ice cold fear running through her veins, it’s not hard for her to muster the will to smile at Jon, to accept his hugs and his tender kisses on her cheeks or temple. In fact, in a way, some part of her even craves it. Mightily.

Sansa shuts her eyes and shakes her head, dismissing her thoughts, pushing away the confusion and revulsion that wars within her. She needs to have a clear mind if she’s going to find out what she needs to know.

When she finds his door, she stops and knocks on it softly, glancing around furtively. When a couple of seconds go by, she knocks again. Louder this time.

Finally, it opens a crack and Edd’s lone, dark eye becomes visible. A moment of horrified realization seems to cloud him because his eye widens and he moves to shut the door, but Sansa reaches out desperately, curling her fingers around the frame, and shoves herself inside.

Edd scrambles forward and wraps his arms around her waist, lifting her and moving her towards the door, but Sansa fights him, elbowing his face and reaching towards objects to stop him from moving her.

An old memory rises up, the bread riot in Kings Landing, men’s hands falling onto her clothes, ripping and laughing and jeering at her tears, their arms wrapped tightly around her, dragging her like Edd seems to be.

Without even fully being aware of it, Sansa’s struggles escalate in their violence, and her gasps and exhales become whimpers and near-silent cries that grow in volume.

“Stop,” she breathes. “I’m sorry. Stop. Please stop. Please-“

Edd drops her and then races around to her front, his eyes wide and guilty and terrified. His dirty palm comes up and clamps down on her mouth to silent her noises, so hard it almost chokes her, and instinctually, she curls her fingers around his wrist, but leaves him there. After a moment, he slowly pulls away.

He gives her a few seconds to orient herself, before he moves in closer, his voice raspy from Jon’s earlier abuse on his throat.

“Please be quiet, my lady. He will hear us and then you won’t be able to stop him,” he begs, his eyes stark and round with blinding fear. He’s shivering violently, like he’s cold, but she knows he isn’t.

“Why?” she asks once she gets her bearings back. “Why are you so afraid of him? What has he done?”

At this, his face goes completely white, and this startles her more than anything. Her resolves grows stronger and jerks her face in close to his.

“ _What. Has. He. Done?_ ” she repeats.

She’s dreading his answer, but she needs to know. She must. She has to. The Jon of old was temperamental, sure, but he would never casually murder a man for simply touching her.

Edd shakes his head vehemently, looking seconds away from pissing himself, and Sansa feels her fear grow into anger. He’s not telling her. He’s not telling her and he should. She’s tired of lies and secrets. She’s heard enough to last a lifetime.

She surges forward and grabs the sides of his face tightly, bearing down on him. She’s holding him so tight, she can feels his head twitching from his desire to keep shaking it.

“Tell me now!” she demands, and like water slipping through open fingers, like a barely contained explosion, he breaks.

“He _died_!” Edd chokes out, his voice garbled by sobs. His hands reach up and hold on to hers and Sansa feels her grip loosen as shock and grief overwhelm her.

_He died?_

“What?” she breathes out. She shakes him by grabbing onto his cheeks. “That’s not possible. Explain.”

“It is as I said, my lady! He died, but the Red Woman brought him back and ever since then he’s never been the same! He is not Jon anymore, but Lord Snow! He murdered his traitors!”

Sansa falls back on her heels, her heart shattering and her brain overwhelmed by the influx of this horrible news. This impossible news. He’s lying. He must be. She says as much to him.

Edd’s eyes become resolute, and he moves forward, his face inches from her hers, his features determined and true, which terrifies Sansa even more.

“I speak the truth. Find the Red Woman and she will tell you all that I have said. I see it in your eyes. You know that you believe me.”

Sansa shakes her head slowly, but even still she asks, “Who is this Red Woman? Where can I find her?”

Edd points outside and Sansa’s eyes follow him. “Near the chambers of the Lord Commander. Her room has the largest hearth. She likes to look into the flames.”

Sansa doesn’t thank him. She simply rushes out of his room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Red Woman opens her door, and Sansa pushes herself inside.

“What have you done to my brother?” she demands, trying to look strong, but her hands shake, her voice shakes. She can’t stop shaking.

The Red Woman eyes her with her ethereal, unsettling red gaze. Sansa knows instantly that this woman is not one like her. She is of another land, another world: one of magic.

She shivers.

“Your brother was brought back by the Lord of Light,” she explains calmly. Her hands reach up and toy with the necklace at her throat, a blood red ruby embedded in the middle.

_Was Jon’s blood that red? That horrifying to look at?_

Sansa shakes her head and focuses on the witch, clenching her hand into fists. She can feel blood bloom underneath her nails where she presses them into her palms.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says. “I don’t know what the Lord of Light is.”

“ _Who_ ,” the Red Woman corrects sternly. “Not what, but who. And he is the one true God, my dear,” she says, her voice soft and lyrical and beautiful.

Sansa hates her and her ethereal looks. Her almost alien beauty.

In the back of her mind, she wonders if Jon finds her similarly beautiful, but she squashes that train of thought.

She scoffs and crosses her arms. “I didn’t come here to discuss theology. I came here to ask what you did to Jon.”

The Red Woman sighs wearily and elegantly sinks down on a chair, her milky fingers rubbing her necklace endlessly.

“I already told you, child. I brought your brother back from the abyss, and he was reborn again.” She says so surely, so plainly, so matter-of-factly, that it can’t be anything but the truth.

Sansa gasps and her knees give out beneath her. She bends down and gives out a long, low sob, her heart feeling like its seconds away from combusting in her chest.

She can’t believe this. She can’t believe this. _She can’t-_

Another sob wracks her chest and she pounds the floor with a clenched fist, welcoming the pain that blossoms in her hand.

She wants to curse the unfairness of it all: of her father dying, of her mother and Robb being slaughtered, of Bran and Rickon being betrayed, of Arya disappearing, of Jon- sweet, gentle, timid Jon- becoming a monster.

But she loves him. She loves him, she loves him, and she can’t stop loving him. Even as he is now. Even as a beast.

A gentle hand grips her chin and red eyes meet her watery gaze. Sansa hates herself for it, but she wants to throw herself into this hateful woman’s lap and cry out her sorrow.

“Your brother is as the Lord decreed it. You cannot change it. Nor can I.” The Red Woman stops and reaches for something next to her.

“I’ve seen many things in the flames, dear child, your brother among them, and I have seen the true nature of his soul. He is something that even the old gods fear”- Sansa shakes and gives out another sob- “But perhaps not all is lost, and something can be done.”

The Red Woman presses an object into Sansa’s hand, and she grips it tight, before running out of the witch’s room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sansa doesn’t knock on his door this time. She knows that he’s asleep.

She stands at the edges of his room, cloaking herself in shadow, hiding the tears on her seemingly perpetual wet cheeks.

She can’t stop crying, and she can’t stop shaking, but she can do this.

She loves him. She has to.

She swallows and takes a few steps forward, keeping her steps silent and swift.

_What was it Arya said all those years ago? Something about being like a cat?_

Sansa would laugh if could find it in herself to stop crying.

Finally, she reaches his bed side, and through the partly open shades of his window, the moonlight illuminates his scarred, awful, beautiful skin, and the luscious dark hair that so reminded her of a prince’s when she was younger.

Sansa stifles a sob and moves closer, sinking down slowly on his bed.

She holds her occupied hand on her lap for a few seconds, keeping it out of his sight, and watches for any sudden movements, any indications that he may have woken up. When there are none, she moves closer still and claps a hand over her mouth when she notices a particular scar: a garish, jagged one over his heart, and she knows now that it’s true. All of it. She cannot hide from it any longer.

Tears slink endlessly down her face as she positions herself next to him, above him, and then astride him, when she slings a knee silently over hips.

She doesn’t allow herself to make any sudden movements, and she ignores that awful, uncomfortable feeling that blossoms inside of her at the sight of him so beautiful and peaceful below her. Innocent. Like the Jon of old.

Like the Jon he isn’t.

Sansa sobs again, and clasps both hands around the handle of the object she holds, raising it above her head, the dagger pointed towards his biggest scar: the one over his heart.

“I’m sorry, Jon,” she whispers inaudibly. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

And her dagger descends.

A moment of divine intervention. Jon’s eyes snap open, the grey color hard on her shocked blue gaze. But strangely, he does nothing. He just stares at her.

“I killed the last boy who stabbed me,” he tells her monotonously. His hands moves upwards, to grab the dagger she thinks, but he simply stops at her hips, gripping them with harsh fingers, hard palms.

She stays silent. She’s scared. She’s shocked. She’s sorry. She loves him.

“Do it,” he says, daring her. “Do it.”

Sansa begins shaking her head, her tears falling harder now, whimpers sounding from her, and Jon’s hands hold her tighter. She could feel bruises blooming where he’s grabbing her.

“I can’t.” She trembles, overwhelmed by what she almost did. By what she could still do. “I can’t!”

In a movement too fast for her to understand, Jon takes her dagger and flips her over, holding down her slight form with his own larger one.

His hand twirls the dagger in a graceful arc and holds it to her throat, and Sansa’s breath hitches.

He’s going to kill her. He going to kill her. He’s going to-

“What would you do if I pressed this into your skin?” he murmurs, moving closer. His chest rumbles where it’s pressed against her own, and a shiver runs down her spine. “Hm?”

Sansa sobs, her fingers clutching onto the hand that holds the knife.

“I would die,” she whispers. “I would die.”

A few seconds pass. They breathe as they look into each other’s eyes. She can’t imagine him being a monster when his eyes glow silver in the moonlight.

“Will you kill me, Jon?” she whispers.

Jon lowers the knife onto the pillow underneath her head, but he coos and shushes at her perpetually trembling body. He presses kisses to her temples, her forehead, her cheeks, her nose. And the shivers that plague her take on a different note. A darker one. One that sets her skin alight instead of freezing it.

“No, no,” he coos, humming into the delicate skin of her throat. He presses a kiss to her jawline. “No, sweet girl. Not you. Never you.”

And the sweetness of his words, the knowledge of what their reunion could’ve been had this cruelty not haunted their family, makes her sob in earnest, and she buries her face into his chest, her hands gripping his back and clawing the skin there.

“Why?” she cries. “ _Why? Why? Why?”_

“Why what?” he asks. He starts nosing at her temple, pausing to sniff her hair.

She can’t decide what hurts worse: his affection now or his cruelty earlier?

“Why are you the way you are now? Why can’t things be normal?”

Jon’s intense eyes meet her own and he skates a hand down from her hair to her wet cheek to her throat, gripping it gently.

“Because, Sansa, my love, my sweet, sweet girl, I am so much _more_ now,” he says, and then lowers his head down, kissing softly up her throat.

She cries, but her neck arches where he kisses her, pressing closer, and her legs wrap around his hips. She doesn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long lovelies, but writing is hard, even when it's for a story I enjoy writing as much as this one. I know many of us are mad about the ending but I've been in fandoms long enough to ignore canon when it suits me so I'm unbothered. Anyway, I hope you guys like the update.
> 
> also: i expect y’all to call me out for the blatant and heavy handed allusions to beauty and the beast like even when i was writing it i knew it was too much.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the lack of Sansa! I intended for this to be a oneshot but I felt satisfied ending it like I did. I hope you guys feel like I did dark!Jon justice because I am endlessly intrigued by how GRRM is gonna portray it in the books, and I am almost positive that it's gonna happen in some capacity. Also, this fic is based more on the books, so no Sansa Poole plot. I'm sorry if that disappoints you. 
> 
> (P.S. I tried to do a dark!Jon even when he was just a child, but it was tempered with Ned's influence and his naturally shy nature. I hope you guys liked that!)


End file.
